Don’t solve wrong problem
A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem. — Don Norman, The Design of Everything.
We are living in a dream world of fast and big money, in the era of unicorns, of explosive growth, easy tech, quick fame, continual acceleration, fake-it-till-you-make-it economy. In the vicious circle of this interesting vocabulary, we have forgotten that ‘solving the problem’ was the motive. Beside having a noticeable tags, these ideas conceal the reality that most of the product industry is making stuff no one wants, because we don’t take time to understand people. We are solving wrong problems, for the sake of solving problems.
Forty-two percent of failed products failed because there was “no market need” for what they were making, CB Insight analyzed.
Clay Christensen, for instance, bored of low numbers, tried to improve the sales of a milkshake company. Being a ‘typical’ entrepreneur, they tried to ‘disrupt’ the milkshake itself by making them sweeter, offered them in different flavors, and slightly increased the size and shape of the cups serving in an awesomely built outlet served by beautiful executives. Nothing worked out. Then he decided to observe the customer, who buys. He found out that the job customers hired the milkshake for was in fact to make their morning car ride to work less boring. The selling point of a milkshake is that it is thick and lasts longer than any other drink, plus it fills you up. This was the real problem. In the end Christensen came up with a simple solution to make the milkshake even thicker, which led to an increase in sales.
Customers buy for their reasons, not yours. — Orvel Ray Wilson
“the job customer hired..”, this is the crust, the baseline. I will talk about this more in my coming posts, for now, lets see who else went wrong and why.
The failure of famous “Twitter Peek”, the ‘twitter only’ device for $99 (+ $7.95 monthly after six months) in 2009 when most of us had smart phones with few 3G connections.
Google+, a social network which focused on just companies, not their people. Not easy to use, no mobile version, no better than Skype (beside video calls, come on! we had many other free softwares for calling), no integration (oops! Slack knew this I guess).
Remember Segway? Once a ‘to-be’ unicorn product failed because of over- understanding of customers and forgot to create a segment for itself. And in turn, customers couldn’t understand it.
It’s very simple, I bet, see the customers, what they need, no matter no one else can see that. Like the milkshake story, after the initial product launch and its presentation in San Francisco, a lot of consumers as well as professionals were in doubt whether there was a market for the iPad at all. New York Times made a comment “this device is laughably absurd” or “how can they expect anyone to get serious computer work done without a mouse?” After only 80 days, Apple sold over 3 million items. People wanted a “simple” device to create stuff like presentations and to consume stuff like watching videos. The iPad did not have to be the new “disruptive” version of a computer.
Use and think of the word ‘disruptive’ very wisely.
Why we build what we build.
Human is biased by nature, so are the companies. It reflects in their culture, in their products. No one can claim who is wrong or right, who shall be successful and who shall not. Everything is fair unless and until the ‘users and buyers’ are happy simultaneously. Let me explain this bias-ness.
There are different approaches and strategies to build and deliver products:
Technology Driven: Take My Road
Some companies believe they recognize what’s best for the client/customer. They operate beneath the notion that they’ll develop technology, design products based on that technology, and have entire markets purchasing their products because they’re technologically superior. They ask them to take ‘their’ way to solve the problem.
Pros: Technology-driven products are often advanced and therefore appeal to early adopters and niche markets who seek the latest technological developments.
Cons: Without implementing proper marketing activities and customer studies, is a risky approach to delivering products.
Sales Driven — A Cruising Taxi
Like a taxi driver cruising city streets trying to find passengers who are heading to,may be, completely different locations, sales-driven firms march their markets seeking deals with customers who fairly often have completely different needs. Like the taxi driver who will deviate out of his way to accommodate the passenger traveling in the opposite direction, these firms will alter their product’s feature set as so to accommodate the particular wishes of a specific customer.
Pros: A sales-driven product strategy can be a lifesaver and used as a survival mode tactic.
Cons: It is a short-term approach that does not build highly sustainable product lines.
Market Driven: Customer first
To gain the status of being market-driven, a company has got to engage its customers and listen to their needs. Being market-driven requires a proactive product management process & methods, engaging customers before the product is planned, defined, designed, and developed. Remember, asking customers what they want during the sales process is not considered actually listening to the market.
Pros: Market-driven product helps establish market leadership and revenue-growth potential.
Cons: Lengthy time involved in executing all phases of the market-driven process.
A case of sales-driven culture posing as market-driven happened to Big Blue. IBM was the dominant force in the technology industry and synonymous with innovation and cutting-edge technology. IBM achieved its leadership position through a market-driven approach by using its massive sales force to determine customer needs. However, the company ran into trouble when it stopped listening for needs and focused on telling customers about its latest new product or technology.
Life is too short to build something nobody wants — Ash Maurya
What to build then?
Build products people want keeping your ego aside. Beware of “ego-satisfy-development” thinking that an idea or product is awesome and special because it’s yours, Scott Hurff says. Don’t fantasize about being a hero thinking that you are going to ride your white “code” horse and save these poor people”. It’s 2019, not 1999, Netflix era, people see what they want to see. Customer has become well vigilant about spending their money and time over anything and everything.
Then what customer wants?
The customer wants your help. Customers often face issues, which need to be solved, or they require enhancing a particular situation. To enhance their situation, they then explore for products, services or experiences that seem helpful in either getting this problem solved, or a minimum of alleviate the pain by improving the situation.
Christensen sorted out a very appropriate expression to precise what it is that generally drives customers to think about the purchase of a product or service: customers have “jobs” that need to get done. A supposed “job to be done” is what an individual really seeks to accomplish and attain in a given circumstance. When people buy a product, they primarily hire something to get the job done.
As it may be a combination of the ‘jobs to be done’ and the customer’s explicit circumstances that ends up in a market segment, for a company developing a product or service a deep understanding of the customers underlying “jobs” and “circumstances” should be the final word goal.
Let’s talk about how to identifying the customers ‘Job to be done’ in efficient ways in my next article. Follow me up for more updates. Give me a clap if you like this one. Comment if you want to convey something. Happy reading.
